Mental health is something I've rarely spoken about on my blog as I didn't want to dampen or bring down the mood of my blog .I also think there is an unfortunate stigma surrounding mental health issues which makes speaking about it or admit when your struggling really hard! You'd think that with 1 in 4 of us every year dealing with mental health problem, or experiencing anxiety, depression etc it would be a much easier topic to talk about or seek help for.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the more I go about my day to day life and speak to different people about mental health issues its becoming more apparent that there are a ton of girls my age experiencing the same issues, anxiety, depression, panic attacks etc when on paper their lives are pretty much perfect! Im in no doubt at all that there are a ton of guys also suffering with mental health but i think they also find it a lot harder to admit and talk about and are more likely to keep it inside as opposed to having a good old cry about it as some of us girls may do!

I think it's also harder to talk about when there's no 'obvious' signs on the outside to anyone else that there's a problem...what I mean by that is when you brake a bone or hurt your foot, you get a bandage or cast and people can clearly see you have a physical issue as your walking with a limp. Mental health issues on the order hand can go totally unnoticed by the people around you and this therefore makes it harder to express and explain how your mind and mental state feels.

I'm personally am not one for medication, I rarely even take painkillers when i should so I'd rather try counselling and meditation / mindfulness to help ease anxiety and mental health issues which brings me on to Headspace.

Headspace is an app which was developed by Andy Puddicombe in 2010 which is like a gym membership for your mind. It's exactly as the name suggests an app to help get some Headspace and to take some time to meditate. Theres a 10 day free course when you download the app called take 10 which is a perfect introduction to mindfulness and meditation and then once your 10 days is up you can subscribe if youd like by paying a subscription fee. Headspace has over 2 million people using the app and I'm hoping that it will help with some of my issues and give me some Headspace! Theres tons of focused sessions or quick simple meditations and the app is is constantly being updated with more so the subscription is totally worth it if you find meditation helpful! Also everytime someone subscribes to Headspace, they donate a subscription to someone who is in need who wouldn't normally be able to afford or have access to it with the Get some / Give some scheme.

Headspace have very kindly given me a year subscription after I expressed to them how much I enjoyed using their app and hope that by sharing this on my blog with you, it will help someone! I've not used headspace for more than a week so I can't say for sure if if will help but its worth a try and if by mentioning the app it helps others then that would be fantastic!

Let me know in the comments if you've found help for any mental health issues you may have faced and if you've used headspace? How did you find the app? Id love to know and hopefully from this post and the comments we can all help each other through what feels like a lonely dark horrible place which is mental health.

I was really nervous and emotional to post this blog post but my fiancé Craig ensured me with one of his original quotes - 'if there was a 'mental health sufferer boat' and a 'never had a mental health issue boat', there would be no room on the mental health boat as pretty much everyone has gone though it at some stage in their life!' Thanks Craig! That makes perfect sense :)

*This post is sponsored by Headspace. All opinions are 100% my own. I am not being paid to talk about Headspace, they kindly sent me a years subscription after I used the free app.